Smart Investing..

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cut its key lending rate for the sixth time in 7 months on Tuesday and pushed commercial banks to follow suit to bolster growth which has taken a bigger-than expected hit from the global downturn. Some Important Highlights Repo rate cut by 25 bps to 4.75%. Reverse repo rate cut by 25 bps to 3.25%. Bank rate and CRR (Cash Reserve Ratio) remains at 6% and 5% respectively. Banks asked to review BPLR system & make credit pricing more transparent   Payment of interest on savings bank account on a daily product basis, wef April 1, 2010 . Settlement of OTC trade on corporate bonds Buy-back of FCCBs (Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds) out of internal accruals, subject to certain discounts, upto USD 100 mln permitted to corporates. Loan against NRI deposit increased from INR 20 lac to INR 1-crore . Interest rate futures to be launched shortly for 10-year paper . STRIPS (separate trading for registered interest and principal of securities) to be launched

Election time has come and investors are today clueless whether to enter or stay away from investing into a ny asset class. In fact this time unlike analyst expectations, I feel either the Congress or the BJP will lead formation of the government with their own respective coalitions but it’s ideal to wait till declaration of results to take any action on direct equity front. Other asset classes / investment vehicles can though be looked at. Since last two weeks Indian market has seen a rally of sort. The Indian benchmark index SENSEX, climbed 38 percent since falling to its lowest level this year on March 9. The present rally might not be very much sustainable and there can be a downturn in the short term. I feel the markets have moved up from around 8500  level to 11k levels very fast without much change in the fundamentals. This probably happened because of positive sentiments globally that much pain is over and the return of the risk appetite to eme rging markets. This can also be